Obama's Road to Healthcare Serfdom

The American Thinker ^ | August 28, 2009 | Andrew Foy and Brenton Stransky

[Scanian]

President Obama is desperate to pass sweeping healthcare reform and now has resorted to pure socialist rhetoric to encourage Americans to support his plan. In his Saturday radio and internet address, President Obama encouraged Americans to call upon "what's best in each of us to make life better for all of us." Fortunately, an accurate account of history and a long line of great thinkers point out the contradiction in the President's remark, which is an obvious appeal for Socialism.

The most notable of these thinkers is F.A. Hayek who educated readers about the unintended consequences of government planning in his famous work The Road to Serfdom. His central thesis can be summed up by the line, "What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it his heaven."

Hayek believed that through the inevitable mismanagement of resources and goods at the disposal of the state, all forms of collectivism lead eventually to tyranny. Hayek used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries that had progressed through the phases of collectivist governments and reached the point of tyranny. Hayek argued that disagreement regarding the practical implementation of any economic plan combined with the inadequacy of the planners' resource management would necessitate coercion in order for anything to be achieved.

This progression from planning to tyranny is critical when considering proposals for healthcare reform that require greater government involvement in the healthcare market. Proponents of such reform would have their audience believe they have no interest in controlling the healthcare decisions people make. However, if we consider the natural progression of a new "government option" or "co-op", we can reasonably conclude that it will end with allocation formulas and government planning boards deciding what kind of healthcare services an individual can and can't receive -- in other words, it will end in tyranny.

Here's how: The government plan will initially be funded through taxing the wealthy and by collecting premiums from enrollees but will quickly outgrow this revenue. It will have to broadly increase taxes on the majority of Americans making it more difficult for them to afford private health insurance.

At the same time, the government plan will not offer reimbursement rates that match those of private insurers. This will cause healthcare providers to charge individuals more with private coverage to make up for lost revenue at the expense of the government plan. As a result, rates for private insurance will increase.

Finally, the government will require individuals to purchase coverage that meets a broad set of regulations determined by the government. These burdensome regulations will ensure that only the most costly private plans remain in existence but the government plan will keep its rates lower in comparison by padding itself with taxpayer dollars.

[FreeAtlanta]

Don't forget the economy/job destroying "Cap n' Trade" aka. "Cap n' Tax" bill.

[VirginiaMom]

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[socialismisinsidious]

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